August 11, 2005 NASA's MESSENGER team is using the CCSDS File Delivery Protocol (CFDP), a highly specialised protocol designed to overcome space operations communications challenges, to download data captured during a successful flyby of Earth last week. A team of international space data communications experts collaborating through the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) developed CFDP to reliably and efficiently downlink files from a spacecraft even in the strenuous environment of deep space. Since the MESSENGER spacecraft's launch a year ago, it has successfully used CFDP to enable mission communications and will use it throughout its 7.9-billion kilometre journey to Mercury.